WASHINGTON – A peanut processing plant in Texas run by the same company blamed for a national salmonella outbreak operated for years uninspected and unlicensed by government health officials, The Associated Press has learned. The Peanut Corp. of America plant in Plainview was never inspected until after the company fell under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, according to Texas health records obtained by AP.
Once inspectors learned about the Texas plant, they found no sign of salmonella there. But new details about that plant — including how it could have operated unlicensed for nearly four years — raised questions about the adequacy of government efforts to keep the nation's food supply safe. Texas is among states where the FDA relies on state inspectors to oversee food safety.
The problem is "not a completely uncommon occurrence," said Cornell University food science professor Joseph Hotchkiss.
The salmonella outbreak was traced to the company's sister plant in Blakely, Ga., where inspectors found roaches, mold, a leaking roof and internal records of more than a dozen positive tests for salmonella.
The outbreak so far has resulted in more than 500 reported illnesses, led to an expansive recall and caused as many as eight deaths. The government is working on a criminal investigation in the case.
In Texas, inspector Patrick Moore of the Department of State Health Services was sent to Plainview, in the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle, after salmonella was traced to the company's plant in Georgia. Moore said the Texas plant wasn't licensed with health officials and had never been inspected since it opened in March 2005. Texas requires food manufacturers to be licensed every two years and routinely inspected.
"I was not aware this plant was in operation and did not know (what) type of products processed," Moore wrote in an inspection report obtained by AP.
The plant is registered with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts to do business as Plainview Peanut Co. LLC, according to state records. But the company "was unable to present evidence at the time of the inspection of a current food manufacturers license," Moore wrote in his report.
The plant was properly registered with the FDA as a food processing plant, said David Glasgow, director of the agency's investigations branch in Dallas.
Margaret Glavin, a retired senior FDA official, said those registrations don't help much. She said food producers are required to register under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, but there is no reliable database that is regularly updated to aid food inspectors. Some companies are listed multiple times, and others remain on the government's list even after they go out of business.
"The database is terrible," said Glavin, who recently stepped down as associate commissioner for FDA's regulator affairs.
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Then I got sick and was too sick to make lunch, so I bought more crackers. I was wondering why I was sick all week, that could explain it.
Pity that action was taken before 500+ people become ill, and some possibly died.
